Functional Programming in Haskell by Examples - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/caiorss/Functional-Programming

<comment><USER2> The grammar in this is a bit off. I'll probably submit a pull request with some edits, if that's something people do? I'm not sure about the etiquette surrounding grammar mistakes in a github repo.

<comment><USER3> Personally I am always thrilled to get grammar/typo fix pull requests to my projects. It means someone cared enough about the project to go through the effort of making a PR just to alleviate a small aesthetic problem!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice reference. It's interesting how intuitive the examples are even though I've never learned a functional programming language before.

<comment><USER5> Learning functional programming is arguably more about unlearning all the terrible hoops other languages make one jump through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great resource. I am learning Haskell. When I get more experienced at Parsec I'll consider a write up and send you a pull request.

Your monad section looks solid, although now I undestand them I can no longer tell if a tutorial is good or not :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious how you feel Haskell has helped you. Do you actually use Haskell for a great percentage of your deliverable code or do you simply use it for ideas, experimentation and so forth?

<comment><USER8> I've made 2-3 toy REST APIs, and now I'm working on a product using a Haskell backend that's bigger. [https://github.com/seanhess/serials](https://github.com/seanhess/serials)

I love it. I mean I could have done the same thing in node. But there's something about the workflow in Haskell. I need to add a new feature I didn't think of. But I don't have to refactor as aggressively because all my code is made up of little functions. I start hacking, my editor has a list of errors I still need to clean up. I clean them up, and it usually works the first try.

Or this morning I wanted to add a connection pool to my rethinkdb driver code. The resource-pool package gives you an awesome way to do it for anything. Without knowing about rethinkdb at all.

Also this morning I wanted to do some IO in parallel. I found several nice concurrency packages and threw one in without any refactoring.

It has its difficulties (deployment?) but I'm really enjoying it.

<comment><USER9> ___It has its difficulties (deployment?) but I 'm really enjoying it._ __

Anything specific? What kind of environments are you deploying in?

<comment><USER5> I highly recommend [https://github.com/NixOS/nixops](https://github.com/NixOS/nixops), which is good for deployment in general, but especially good for Haskell since the Haskell infrastructure was rewritten this year.

<comment><USER10> I found myself using cabbage[0] so I could have exact version dependencies. Nix was awesome when mostly using latest versions of a package, but for much of my code I needed specific versions and cabbage allowed me to have them.

0: [https://github.com/acowley/cabbage](https://github.com/acowley/cabbage)

<comment><USER5> For the sake of a single manager for my whole system I'll stick with nix. But yes, it would be nice if it knew more about versions. In a future where upstream projects can maintain their own nix packages, I think this will be unavoidable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The GHCi command to enable multiline mode is `:set +m`, not `:set +s`. `set +s` enables profiling.</comment>


What class in college did you get the most out of? - <AUTHOR>

If you would recommend one or two classes to anyone, what would they be? <comment><USER2> I would not recommend any class, but surely I would recommend a few teachers, the kind of teacher that let you think by yourself, that inspires you to create something new. The kind of teacher that teaches you something but encourages you to find a better way.

I think that's the point. Classes are as great as teachers make them! So find a great teacher and you'll have your best class ever.

<comment><AUTHOR> The right friends do this too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Most useful: Linear algebra, Numerical methods, Stats and probability

Most interesting: Control systems, Abstract algebra, Real analysis, Complex analysis

Of course my definition of "useful" is not necessarily yours. I'm much more on the research side of things, and having a solid mathematical foundation is absolutely essential there. My advice for taking courses in college: take courses that you know will be useful, but you will not have the time to teach to yourself. If you're a true nerd you will learn all the really useful stuff on your own anyway, and you don't need university for that.

</comment><comment><USER4> If I had one recommendation, it would be to keep practicing any math you learn while in college. If you're like me, you basically had math classes every semester from when you were 6 years old until the end of college, and you take for granted how much you will be able to forget in 5 years without practice.

The classes I got the most out of aren't the ones I'd necessarily recommend. Whether I got a lot out of a class depended on lot on what the rest of my schedule looked like at the time (besides variables like professor and class makeup). If I was taking 12 credits, I'd tend to get a lot out of all of them. If I was taking 18 plus being a treasurer of a singing group and planning a trip to Europe, I wouldn't learn as much.

Sometimes, I'd get a lot of knowledge out of a class, but the perspective and wisdom wouldn't come until later. I learned how to write a fugue in '18th century counterpoint.' Like the Zelda one on this page:

<http://www.goladus.com/music/musicpage.php>

But it wasn't until I'd been out of college a few years that I figured out how to write a coherent piece that was longer than a minute or so (not counting fugues, which I could still write if I wanted to).

Here's some more: <http://www.myspace.com/gadolus>

As you can see I really have no idea how to promote music. That might be something I'd recommend a music major learn about.

Others, like Theory of Computation, I loved but because I didn't find any use for it in the first few years after college, I forgot a lot. I still get the basic concepts of nondeterminism and context-free grammars and such, but I'm having to basically relearn all the useful stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> >As you can see I really have no idea how to promote music.

On the other hand, unlike many people who do, you know how to _make_ music. Serious talent. How long have you been doing it?

<comment><USER4> I started plunking out twinkle twinkle and star wars on the organ when I was 4 or 5 or something. I started saxophone lessons in 4th grade, piano in 5th grade. I 'wrote' one piece as an exercise while taking piano. My teacher gave me a chord progression and I came up with a few patterns that sounded an awful lot like the overworld music in Final Fantasy IV. I stopped piano after 9th grade and did drama and choir instead. I sang in a Vocal Jazz ensemble, and played sax in the Jazz band, and had lots of opportunity to improvise.

In college my introductory computer science classes were really boring and easy, while the introductory music classes were challenging and interesting. Sophomore year I declared a double major in Music Theory. I took composition lessons for 1 or 2 semesters, I can't remember exactly, but I didn't get much out of them. Two of the "Three Short Pieces for Piano" were written in lessons. Writing for class was really hard, because I felt like I had to please the professor, though he tried to tell me to write whatever I wanted. I agonized over every detail, which got discouraging, because usually there was no correct answer. I also had huge confidence problems because of the rigid, mathematical way I thought music should be appreciated. That is, I thought there was no way I could ever come up with anything original, and I thought original==good.

One day a few years ago, after listening to dozens of Mozart pieces dozens of times, hearing how amazing it was, and knowing how many people poo pooh'd Mozart for using predictable harmonic progressions; I said 'screw it, I'm writing a classical sonata and don't care how unoriginal it turns out to be.' I did it because that's what I liked and that's what I wanted to write. I've had a lot of fun since then, though I haven't made any money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had a bunch of courses that I really liked in college:

Tonal Harmony and Counterpoint, aka "Harmonize this melody in 4-part harmony" - where you find that there are intricate rules to music, and what you hear on the radio is the result of centuries of evolution in what's considered "acceptable" music. (Or, if you listen to punk rock, the result of breaking nearly every rule for kicks.)

Intro Geology, aka "Rocks for Jocks" (it's funny though; the English-major jocks always struggled in this class, while us one or two physics majors were like "pish, this is easy") - where you play with lots of rocks and go on lots of field trips. I found it surprisingly interesting.

Sustainable Agriculture, aka "This hippy bio professor got a grant for teaching enviro-friendly stuff" - where you learn that there is shit in the meat, and we're all gonna starve when the oil runs out.

Also really liked my philosophy courses, General Relativity, Game Theory, and perhaps Mathematical Logic (though I found that one really hard).

</comment><comment><USER6> Operating Systems.

And if you have a chance to TA, do it. You learn a lot more by teaching than you do by being taught.

<comment><USER5> I'd also recommend the other two of the "big three" computer science electives - Compiler Design, and Computer Graphics. You can skip most of the rest of the CS major, but no matter how good a programmer you think you are, you'll get something out of those 3 courses.

And I'll second the bit about TAing, though my experience was in physics rather than CS. Being a physics lab TA is cool...you get to play with all sorts of stuff. (Heck, taking physics labs is cool, though the lab reports are not so cool.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Is Statistical Mechanics worth learning?

<comment><USER5> It was wrapped up together with Waves, Optics, and Thermal Physics at my college (and then I think they redid the curriculum the year after I passed through and pulled it out). The parts that I saw definitely seemed worth learning - you learn that pop-science concepts like entropy and temperature actually have precise mathematical definitions in terms of the states of the individual particles. You also learn a bunch of nifty mathematical tricks for dealing with Really Big Numbers.

Actually, I'd probably recommend it more for someone planning to go into finance, economics or history (!!) rather than someone going into physics or CS, unless you're going into a subfield directly related to stat mech. Most of my physics coursework has been basically useless for my computer programming; yeah, it's nifty to know your vectors and rotation matrices (particularly if you go into graphics), but I've never had to solve a volume integral or contract a tensor since dropping my physics major.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> History of Science.

Granted, it's not a math or CS course, but nothing has better informed the way I think about problems, technical and political. It might as well be called 'History of Problems'.

<comment><USER8> Nod, I loved "History of Math" it traced the methods people used to solve problems though time.

The strangest part was how interconnected mathematical understanding is with the rest of society. EX: Try and run a bank without basic algebra.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I took a class titled "Entrepreneurship" when I was in college about 10 years ago. Every other week a different entrepreneur spoke. The founder of Jolt Cola came in and told us "we love water [as a market]--it comes out of the tap, and you can sell it for a dollar a bottle." He also showed us one of their big- sellers: Americola--sold ONLY in Japan, with a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the can. That was the moment I realized how twisted marketing can be.

</comment><comment><USER10> Theory of Computation - this was really a grab bag of discrete math. We covered a little of automata theory, complexity, graph theory, and even abstract algebra. The problem sets were really hard, it felt like weight- lifting for my brain.

Molecular Biology - the material itself was a bit dry, but taken as a whole it completely changed my understanding of life as a dynamic process.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not a specific class, but I've really enjoyed taking the various speaker series. These are one credit classes where we just get a different speaker each week. This semester I'm actually taking Women & Entrepreneurship. It's basically 60 women and me. They like having me around though so it works out.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure you like having them around more :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For me the best way to learn has been to do projects in the subject. Not a class. Never. If it is new math, I need to work out some interesting problems using it. Everything that I know I learnt on my own. Some interesting teachers helped put the spark. But thats all teachers can do. Spark you. You have to do the burning, for which you basically have to like learning.Just don't care about if it is useful later or not. Thats not how knowledge is structured. Go with the fun. If stat mech is fun, why not.

</comment><comment><USER13> Operating systems and compilers/compiler optimization.

Computer graphics, but that's not necessarily interesting/useful to everyone.

U of T has a 4th year course called "Computer Architecture" which brought together concepts from almost all the other computer courses and which I enjoyed immensely.

</comment><comment><USER14> History of Imperialism

Ethics

Remember that cheesy line from Spiderman about great power bringing great responsibility? In the event that great intellect allows a person to attain wealth and/or power, I would sleep better at night knowing that person understood some past mistakes of the wealthy and powerful, and they had at least considered some of the collective guidance of humanity.

If the question were constrained to CS, then I would say Compilers. But that's a loaded answer, since it damn near requires a CS degree to truly appreciate compilers.

If you want to have fun and know yourself better, take a class in art or music.

</comment><comment><USER15> Italian, because I wanted to go live there. It was one of the best and most important things in my life, as I met my wife there. Learning a language and living "somewhere else" is a great experience - and I think the two should be combined. Learning a language feels pointless until you have real, live people in front of you, that you can communicate with only if you can speak their language.

</comment><comment><USER16> Linearity: You need a friendly helpful teacher for this one. The class comes in use when you need to solve multiple iterations of a particular calculation. For instance, triangulation is a cinch now that I've taken Linearity.

English literature: It's fun to read the classics and compare them to how politicians and blogs cherry pick and bastardize quotes.

<comment><USER17> But, I would say, you have to take it with the right teacher...someone who pushes you to find your own understanding of the literature. This usually doesn't happen until the 300 and 400 level courses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Patterns of leadership; without a doubt.

The programing classes I took I was correcting mistakes on the teachers test. I know programing.

Patterns of leadership was a class about dealing with people (read 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' for an idea of what it covered). This was a class where I learned an incredible amount.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've had three full years in college now and I was thinking how sad it was that I couldn't think of a single class that I would actually recommend to anyone. But then I remembered that I got 3 credits for going to China for two weeks and writing 25 pages about Lenovo with 3 other people. I would recommend that class.

</comment><comment><USER20> This class involved bantering about nothing and and absolutely everything at the same time. It was a small class (usually 3 unique friends that I had just met). And the format was twice a week/discussion. I think it was called: Late- night/post party/stupid drunk/socio-political seminar 101. Take it. Seriously.

</comment><comment><USER21> 1) Technical Writing 2) Project Management

A tie for most useful... Both courses have been far more practical than my actual technical capabilities. The first one taught me how to effectively tailor my ideas to my audience, and the second taught me how to take an idea from start to finish.

</comment><comment><USER22> I thoroughly enjoyed Business Law, Microeconomics, and an intro to Psychology course. Everyone should probably take psych and an economics class in order to understand people and the world in which we live. B law was great for critical thinking and I learned a good bit about the law as well.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was always in the library, because I had no interest in what I was being taught, and (I didn't realise it then, but) I couldn't bear being in a roomful of people for lectures. I wish I'd done something like an Open University (is there a US equivalent to this organisation?) course instead.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Topics in X" courses where you pretty much got to do whatever you wanted and then you wrote a report and gave a presentation about it, exploring what you wanted to with advice from the professor.

Somewhere in there is an argument for constructionist education a la Piaget et al.

</comment><comment><USER25> My Compilers introductory course. But that's probably because I work on a compiler in my actual job right now.

I also really enjoyed my computational geometry class.

But the first poster is right: good teachers are at least if not way more important than interesting classes.

</comment><comment><USER26> Human Intelligence Enterprise: [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical- Engineering-and-Compute...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering- and-Computer-Science/6-803The-Human-Intelligence- EnterpriseSpring2002/CourseHome/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER27> My AP Eng. teacher had a one-one talk with me on day 2 of class about her expectations--and how much I had slacked on the first homework assignment. For once a teacher that didn't rubberstamp everything you turned in. I went from hating English to loving that class.

</comment><comment><USER28> How much you get out of a class depends a lot upon the professor, I think.

I got the most out of my Software Engineering courses - Testing, Usability, Systems, etc.

They are usually team-based, are reasonably rigorous, and have generally good professors.

</comment><comment><USER29> Compilers; Programming Language Principles; Database Implementation.

</comment><comment><USER30> oil painting. taught me to look at the world in a whole different way. and inspired me to change my major.

(i'm not saying this to win points with PG. i actually find hacking pretty different from painting.)

more generally, stretch out into different disciplines. these days, most of the interesting stuff happens at the intersections. plus, you'll meet a lot of interesting folks whose paths would never cross with yours otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER31> A classical education instead of GE: intense reading of the classics, 6-9 hours of intense discussion/debate with your peers, & a thesis every semester.

</comment><comment><USER32> Data Structures and Algebra. Data Structures hold a nice start for algorithms and Algebra will teach you how math works, and ends with cryptography.

</comment><comment><USER33> Senior project, of course.

Most all of the undergraduate courses focused on _analysis_. I hated that! Let me _design_ stuff already!

</comment><comment><USER34> I only went to college for 2 weeks, but I enjoyed sculpture. Everything else seemed like a bad joke.

</comment><comment><USER35> Advanced Microprocessor Interfacing and Communication (AKA Robotics!)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd recommend Discrete Math, Economics, History of Science.

</comment><comment><USER37> Creative Non-fiction

<comment><USER11> After an entire semester of that class I still fail to grasp what exactly a non-fiction essay is. So far as I could tell, it's only an essay if you write about how your parents were alcoholics, how you were beaten as a child, or how you live with a terrible illness. Needless to say no one liked the stuff I wrote and I didn't do very well.

<comment><USER37> I think it is just recounting "the facts" in narrative form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Introduction to Marketing and Securities Law.

</comment><comment><USER39> acting 1, history of modern arts, public policy in econ, game theory in econ, finance, and lots of math

</comment><comment><USER40> Forget the class, find the best teacher. (Just reiterating what people are saying here) My best class was Entrepreneurship II, just because the teacher was great and taught from personal experiences.</comment>


New Evidence for the Necessity of Loneliness - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160510-loneliness-center-in-the-brain/ <comment><USER2> "The lowest ranked mice, in contrast, didn't seem to mind being alone. Perhaps they enjoyed isolation, being free of their harassers."

Or perhaps the loners don't desire to be strongly tied to the group, let alone dominant leaders of the group.</comment>


Monitor Control: Control your external monitor brightness and volume on your Mac - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MonitorControl/MonitorControl <comment><USER2> Great app! Works perfectly on a modern LG display.</comment>


Ask HN: Is this a billion dollar business idea? - <AUTHOR> There was a post today about selling space on municipal vehicles for AVLR systems and gas sensors.  I was reading this and thinking, how do we generalize it?  How about a portal for municipalities who can register and search for monetization opportunities?  Then I wanted to expand this further.  I want to connect Companies-Who-Want-To-Do-Wardriving with Uber-Drivers-Who-Want-More-Money and also with Cash-Strapped-Municipalities. <comment><USER2> So, I am an uber driver and install a gas sensor. I gather data on every ride (realtime hook to a cloud log). A company buys my data to give it to muni for free, in some manner of green tax payment?

</comment><comment><USER3> put vibration sensors on cars and use vibration analysis to get a measure of how rough various sections of road for most needed road repairs and resurfacing.

run air particulate sensors and create daily maps of particulate counts in the air for people with asthma or other respiratory diseases

</comment><comment><USER4> Many, many business ideas are billion-dollar ideas.

The question is: Do you have a billion-dollar execution (e.g., marketing)?

<comment><AUTHOR> As an individual, you would create a profile on the site, so you can find opportunities. If you own a car, you might want to see how you can get paid for putting a wrap on your car, or driving around with a box.

Gotta think of a good name for this. It's like when you pay a data center to host your box, except this time, your car is the data center.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's say you went as far as designing a rack, for hot swappable modules. The rack just holds them in your trunk or wherever and provides 12v power, maybe with a ups.</comment></comment></comment>


Quest Diagnostics says 11.9M patients affected by data breach - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/03/quest-diagnostics-breach/ <comment><USER2> And yet another breach where the affected victims did absolutely nothing wrong, nor can they do anything to prevent it from happening in the future, and yet they will shoulder the entire burden of the fallout, while the responsible company will suffer no consequences whatsoever.</comment>


EquationGroup Tool Leak – ExtraBacon Demo - <AUTHOR> https://xorcatt.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/equationgroup-tool-leak-extrabacon-demo/ <comment><USER2> Someone at Kiwicon (2015, I think?) went through breaking into a CISCO router. Newer Cisco hardware actually runs a Linux kernel and one, massive (I think it was like 50MB) binary. There's only one ethernet device too because the others are controlled by user-space PCI devices within that binary.

For what I could tell, it looked like Cisco use to have a full independent OS (ios) and when they switched to Intel hardware, it was easier for them to just build a shim layer between Linux and their OS so they could run on cheaper/newer hardware without a massive rewrite.

Anyway, that guy responsibly disclosed and his exploit was patched, but it did give full access to everything, including the ability to create new routes and filters that wouldn't even be visible from within ios.

</comment><comment><USER3> Source code from the leak, if anyone's curious: [https://github.com/nneonneo/eqgrp-free- file/tree/master/Fire...](https://github.com/nneonneo/eqgrp-free- file/tree/master/Firewall/EXPLOITS/EXBA)

</comment><comment><USER4> Ha! Someone sent 1.5 BTC (~800 USD) to the hacker's address 19BY2XCgbDe6WtTVbTyzM9eR3LYr6VitWK to bid on eqgrp_auction_file.tar.xz.asc. He sent it from a vanity bitcoin address starting with "1nice" ;-) [https://blockchain.info/tx/c44b40b6d845d9cc256e21606821569db...](https://blockchain.info/tx/c44b40b6d845d9cc256e21606821569dbe7232ffeab4cd7c65b037ca7e38abd1)

<comment><USER5> It embeds a Bitmessage[1] address using the OP_RETURN[2] opcode as EquationGroup requested:

        BM-2cXe6wAT7yTgoxGCpDMmdWq2xxWcdmL3Ek

[1] [https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page) [2] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/OP_RETURN](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/OP_RETURN)

<comment> ryan-c This one[0] has cryptome's GPG fingerprint.

The same person seems to have sent several others, including one listing cryptome's email address and several rude[1] and vulger[2] messages. Charming.

0\. [https://blockchain.info/tx/8974f9ba743f073bfe18a2f1505ad9934...](https://blockchain.info/tx/8974f9ba743f073bfe18a2f1505ad993401a0f8ea02406c8633741be61b07a26)

1\. [https://blockchain.info/tx/8e1e3cda1caf23e2f3071595efdbc794b...](https://blockchain.info/tx/8e1e3cda1caf23e2f3071595efdbc794b9775c8cbd750cdac14494f01d12eaf1)

2\. [https://blockchain.info/tx/527202542acc7d87a763bafa5fc66a0a9...](https://blockchain.info/tx/527202542acc7d87a763bafa5fc66a0a96e4cf5c338d7701a552124c9a776fae)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_Group)

FYI

</comment><comment><USER7> without the enable password, you can't do much

<comment><USER8> Could you elaborate to those of us not familiar with Cisco routers?

My understanding is this exploit disables password authentication and allows you to access the device. A seperate command allows you to re-enable it.

Would this re-enabling kill your current connection? Is the password later needed to change settings on the router (like if you typed sudo and are forced to re-authenticate)?

<comment><USER9> On a Cisco router you login via SSH or Telnet, then you run a command to become 'enabled'. enable is a command like sudo on Linux-it elevates your permission level so you can make changes (although not all changes require you to be enabled, most do).

If you used ExtraBacon to clear the login user/password you would get a basic shell on connection. This would open at least 2 options to you as an attacker-1) using a local exploit to become an enabled user and 2) you can now send traffic to ALL the networks that the firewall/router knows about-for example, a non-internet connected management network that might be filled with never upgraded KVM/OOB control equipment.

<comment><USER8> Thanks! #2 definitely seems like a big issue. I can imagine many "internal" services that are potentially insecure.

<comment><USER10> My fav is IPMI. Many devices allow you to log in using cipher 0... basically, if you know the username, you get access. The rest... well, IMPI has a hash disclosure built into the protocol. If you can guess a username, you can get (and try to crack) the password.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "ExtraBaconDemo" Ok, this is going to be hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER12> So I downloaded the files and poked around the Python code. The code looked positively amateurish, not in its functionality (I'm sure it works) but in the coding style. I'm not sure what I expected, but the formatting, the types of comments, it all looked like it was written by someone who just started out with Python. Maybe it was written very hastily, I don't know, but I encourage others to take a look. It's interesting to see the source for this kind of stuff.

<comment><USER13> I'm curious if this has to do with their generally broken English, as I read on what I think was their blog post. Does English proficiency affect coding "fluency", seeing as you are coding in English?

<comment><USER14> I don't think that the English of that message is real. Looks made up, maybe too give a better aura of mystery and possibly to avoid the risk of being recognised by some writing style analysis software.</comment></comment></comment>


Privacy Commissioner Finds Facebook Violating Canadian Privacy Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4139/125/

<comment><AUTHOR> The report itself is here: <http://www.priv.gc.ca/cf- dc/2009/2009_008_0716_e.cfm></comment>


Why Teen Girls Aren't Using IUDs - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/why-teen-girls-arent-using-iuds/385412/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> My wife is highly satisfied with her IUD. You can get it installed and then it works for ten years without any trouble. You don't need to put condoms on (which do diminish sensation) at an awkward moment. You don't have to remember to take pills (with side effects) or to insert a cervical cap. You just have sex when you like and don't think about birth control.

However, the IUD works best in the case of mutually monogamous relationships. Even if she was loyal but I was screwing around, that would greatly increase her chances of painful and serious complications since she'd be exposed to a much wider microbiome of things I bring home.

We had a friend who has had a somewhat disorganized sex life involving multiple terminations of unwanted pregnancies with different partners and she got an IUD after hearing our glowing testimonials.

Not long after it got infected; there was not any permanent damage but it was an unpleasant experience and it deprived her from what is otherwise one of the best forms of birth control.

I can't say for sure that her disorganized sex life led to her IUD failure, but I'd be concerned that young women who are practicing something in the spectrum between casual sex and serial monogamy with boys that are doing the same won't have as good results as committed couples do.</comment>


On the Directional Predictability of Equity Premium Using Machine Learning [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=IAAE2019&paper_id=624 <comment><AUTHOR> Now published in the Journal of Forecasting: [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/for.2632](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/for.2632) . The data is at [http://www.hec.unil.ch/agoyal/docs/PredictorData2018.xlsx](http://www.hec.unil.ch/agoyal/docs/PredictorData2018.xlsx) .

The classification models aim to predict whether the monthly stock market return is positive or negative. I wonder how you modify a classification problem when some errors are more costly than others (other than just treating it as a regression problem). Predicting the stock market goes up is more costly when it falls 10% than when it falls 1%.

The working paper "Predicting Stock Market Returns with Machine Learning" at [https://sites.google.com/site/albertorossifrb/research](https://sites.google.com/site/albertorossifrb/research) attacks the same problem using machine learning regression models.</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you get your news from? - <AUTHOR> What is your favorite source of news? <comment><USER2> Avoid getting your news from a single source.

Some ideas:

* Don't use social media as a source.

* Don't use social media as a source.

* Google news - aggregates news from a variety of reputable sources

* Washington Post

* NYT

* Russia Today, Al Jazeera, BBC, Chinese news outlets : Hear me out, you have to know how people in different countries think about world events

* Reddit

* Hackernews

* Pinboard on Twitter is a good source :)

When you have different perspectives on the same topic, you will be in a better position to have a less biased view on world events.

Having done this for some time, I can say it's also fun (and scary) to watch how news outlets are so biased in their reporting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hacker News.</comment>


Are Uber and Lyft responsible for reducing DUIs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/10/are-uber-and-lyft-responsible-for-reducing-duis/ <comment><USER2> I doubt it has anything to do with Uber/Lyft specifically and everything to do with the availability of cabs. So, another way of framing this: how many DUI deaths have been caused by artificial limitations on the number of cab licences over the years?

In Seattle when I was in my early 20s, it was nearly impossible to call or catch a cab when the bars closed, so often we just walked home. And on New Year's Eve? Forget about it...

Incidentally, walking in a city while drunk is also dangerous. For about a third of U.S. pedestrian deaths, the _pedestrian_ was drunk, according to one study. [http://bigstory.ap.org/article/drunk-walking-leads- pedestria...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/drunk-walking-leads-pedestrians- fatalities)

<comment><USER3> My impression is that it's primarily the interface and reliability that makes Uber/Lyft better. Sure, short wait times are a nice bonus, but the primary problem with regular cabs isn't the speed so much as the unpredictability.

The problem is that I can't count on the voice-operated cab system. I have to call, and then wait outside at the pickup point, with a 50% chance of the cab actually getting there, at which point you call and get another 50% chance of the cab getting there within 30 minutes, at which point you repeat.

I have no idea if it's going to be 5 minutes or 120 minutes. I have to stay outside, too, because they won't call me when it's there.

If a cab took an hour but I could set it up on my phone while I was still in the bar, and it would alert me when it got there? That would be just fine with me.

Now, the local cab company could (and perhaps has, I have not checked lately) create an app that does just this; I don't really mind waiting half an hour if I had some assurance that the car would be there in half an hour.

<comment><USER4> > I don't really mind waiting half an hour if I had some assurance that the > car would be there in half an hour.

But why would you, if you could get a car within minutes?

<comment><USER3> >But why would you, if you could get a car within minutes?

Obviously, given the choice between a good interface with slow service and a good interface with fast service, at similar price points, I'll pick the latter.

I was just saying that even if uber/lyft did not add more cabs to the road (decreasing my wait time) - and that's the part where some are suggesting they are engaging in "regulatory arbitrage"\- just having a uber-like interface to a regular cab company would take the pre-existing cab system from "not good enough" to "good enough" for me to use on nights out. For me, at least, the interface (a lot of which is the ability to not need to watch for the cab) is more important than the speed.

(Of course, would existing cab companies bother to use a new system, when all their cabs are already full?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I particularly like that I don't have to deal with cash while tipsy and in the dark of night.

I've never used Lyft, but I have used Uber and usually find them them be quick and very service oriented. From what I've heard Lyft is given them competition in both ways, so I look forward to trying them as well.

Far better than any cab I've ever taken.

<comment><USER6> The cabs I've used in the last few years have all had credit card swipers in the car. I figured this would be a universal feature of any moderately populated cities' cab system in 2014.

<comment><USER7> I've been in cabs where they give you a hard time about paying with credit cards, I'm assuming because of the fees or they'd rather deal with cash maybe under the table?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Spoiler alert. The answer to the headline is, "Who knows? But nice to wonder, eh?"

> _Again, caveats are in order. We 've simply plotted arrests on a timeline > here; we haven't adjusted for changes in the city's population, or bar > scene, or the economy. Any number of other things may have changed in the > city over the last few years affecting DUI arrests. It's possible police > have changed how they conduct DUI stops and arrests, or that public pressure > on them to crack down on DUIs has ebbed with time. Other changes in public > transit service may have impacted alternative routes that bar-hoppers take > home._

 _It 's also striking that San Francisco and Philadelphia show a steep and parallel rise in DUIs long before these services ever came to town; on both charts, it looks as if DUI numbers may be returning to an older normal as much as they've been falling. Perhaps these services have arrived on the market just in time to ride the benefits of an improving economy? (More theories on this welcome below as well)._

It's sad that traffic-desperate news sites have forgotten how to write a assertive, non-question headline...something like "Measuring ride-sharing's impact on DUIs requires more data" would do just fine.

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines) continues to apply then.

Nothing to see here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems very difficult to conclude that Uber and Lyft are responsible for reducing DUIs from that graph.

* There's already a downward trend well before Uber and Lyft come into play.

* Even if the downward trend is stronger more recently, Waze also came into existence a few years ago. Maybe people were, e.g., downloading Waze and using it to find police cars beforehand.

* The graph measures arrests, not incidents. So it could be that, for instance, police are getting laxer about DUI enforcement, rather than that people are driving drunk less.

In short, there's too many confounding factors here to conclude that Lyft and Uber should get credit.

<comment><USER11> _So it could be that, for instance, police are getting laxer about DUI enforcement, rather than that people are driving drunk less._

This may be true somewhere, but not anywhere that federal anti-DUI funds are tied to purchase of new vehicles and equipment. In those places, i.e. most of the nation, there is no laxity, even though there certainly should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> While I hope this would be true, all the graphs tells me is that we're going back down to 2003-2005 levels of DUIs. There can be several causes for this, maybe education on not to DUI caused it, maybe less people can afford cars (just read an articles that teens/ people in their 20s have aren't buying cars as much as previous generations), or want to drive in cities like SF where a day's parking can cost more than $30, you have to circle around several blocks to find a free space.

I do like the idea of not driving, and think the DUI rate will rapidly decrease once things like self driving cars better enable us to give up personal vehicles.

</comment><comment><USER13> The interesting observation is how the economy correlates to dui arrests. Either through people maintaining their lifestyle but not being able to afford a cab or police departments reacting to cuts in funding.

Crediting uber is a startup echo-chamber delusion.

</comment><comment><USER14> Meh. This just sounds like a rehash of the Uber press release from a while back - [http://blog.uber.com/tag/dui/](http://blog.uber.com/tag/dui/)

I doubt they're having much impact, personally, unless in cities where there isn't much of a developed cab infrastructure already, and people drive for a night out. This probably doesn't describe anywhere outside the US.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's just plotting the number of monthly arrests, that doesn't tell you much.

</comment><comment><USER16> More interesting to me are the statistics on drunk walking deaths. According to freakonomics.com, it is more dangerous to walk drunk then to drive drunk. I'd like to see those stats with the DUI stats.

</comment><comment><USER17> I find it quite interesting that when private schools are mentioned as an alternative to some of the terrible public schools we have in the US, the HN majority (which I now need to mention as a whole, since most things are down voted if they don't fit the opinion of HN) goes crazy and talks about how anti-union this, etc.

But, both Uber and Lyft are completely going around the taxi unions in many cities in the US by not paying regulatory fees and it's a-ok.

<comment><USER18> > most things are down voted if they don't fit the opinion of HN

There is no such thing as "the opinion of HN". The community is divided on most issues. Different constituencies upvote and downvote different things.

There's a bias on some issues, like NSA/Snowden (albeit with a substantial dissenting minority). But on typical left vs. right issues, my sense is that the community is about evenly split, and so are the complaints of bias.</comment></comment>


Google Cloud Dataproc: Making Spark and Hadoop Easier, Faster, and Cheaper - <AUTHOR> http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/09/Google-Cloud-Dataproc-Making-Spark-and-Hadoop-Easier-Faster-and-Cheaper.html <comment><USER2> Highlights:

\- Per minute billing

\- Industry-leading startup times (get a cluster up in under 90 seconds)

\- Fully integration with BigQuery, Bigtable, Cloud Logging, etc.

\- Use Preemptible VMs

\- Use GCS as your storage engine instead of HDFS (separation of storage and compute, easy multitenancy/concurrency)

<comment><USER3> how integrates with BigQuery?</comment></comment>


Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Byron/gitoxide <comment><USER2> All: Rust has clearly reached the now-it's-a-flamewar-trigger stage of the hype cycle. Nobody wants that. If you're posting to HN, please stick to interesting specific things, not boring generic ones.

Programming language flamewar is not interesting, so please don't do it here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER3> This is really saddening to hear.

I am one of the devs who got attracted to Rust's advantages over C/C++ (no double free or use after free, guaranteed memory ownership, relatively fearless concurrency) and have been using it increasingly to the point of now professionally working with it.

But I never felt the need to degrade others for not using it. I do have my strong opinions about when and where it should be used but I almost never escalate them to flaming (sadly it occasionally happens even to the best humans).

I'd hate it if such an excellent technology's well-deserved adoption is held back because its core user base is viewed as zealots.

:(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am the author, and will be here for a few hours in case there are any questions.

(proof: [https://keybase.io/byronbates](https://keybase.io/byronbates))

<comment><USER5> How does gitoxide perform compared to c-git? A slow operation I often encounter is `git log --graph` for example.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately I can't yet tell, as the corresponding code does not yet exist. Object and pack lookup is competitively fast so I would hope that translates well to everyday operations like that.

Actual numbers for what's there, pack access and traversal, can be found here: [https://github.com/Byron/gitoxide/issues/1](https://github.com/Byron/gitoxide/issues/1) and here: [https://github.com/Byron/gitoxide/issues/5](https://github.com/Byron/gitoxide/issues/5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are several comments on the value of having this project be "pure rust".

Based on my experience, the main value is that it makes this code easily portable.

Meaning, if you can compile rust on your device, you can just run this code without worrying about also installing and appropriately linking the correct version of some C library. It's a huge convenience.

Of course, this only works if all dependencies are also pure Rust. I haven't verified that this is the case here. Here's hoping!

<comment><USER7> I think that ANSI-C is a lot more portable than Rust, to be honest.

<comment><USER8> It depends on what exactly you mean by "portable." This is an extremely complicated space with a ton of interlocking dependencies, but here are two axes on which you could make opposite claims, and be correct:

* C is more portable than Rust because there are C compilers available for more platforms than there are Rust compilers for Rust platforms.

* Rust is more portable than C because Rust programs tend to be written in a more platform agnostic way, and are therefore more likely to be able to work on platforms that they weren't originally intended for.

(To make the second point more concrete, as a Windows user, pure Rust programs almost always Just Work for me, but as soon as we get into C dependencies, it becomes way, way way worse.)

<comment><USER9> No, no, ... Turbo Pascal is what is more portable than C.

Proof: just look at graphics. You just write your graphics code in a platform- independent way and use the correct .BGI file for your graphics hardware.

And it's safe: no pointer arithmetic or void; real array passing. Module system for dependencies. No makefiles needed. No problem of linking a stale object file that didn't get rebuilt due to a missing dependency rule.

Turbo Pascal is the golden future, my friends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're interested in a step-by-step guide on how to build your own git from scratch, this book is excellent and incredibly educational: [https://shop.jcoglan.com/building-git/](https://shop.jcoglan.com/building- git/)

<comment><USER11> Trust me its way easier than you think and there are tons of free resource available you dont need a $36 book to build git.

<comment><USER12> You probably misunderstood: they're not talking about building from source (which is easy), but rather about recreating Git from scratch in another programming language (which is hard).

<comment><USER11> No I understood, and it is still easy. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19386141](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19386141)

[https://youtu.be/MYP56QJpDr4](https://youtu.be/MYP56QJpDr4)

<comment><USER10> I didn't watch the video but I've gone through that guide you linked, it's excellent but I don't think it's a great comparison. It only implements a handful of commands and doesn't go into the same amount detail. The Building Git book goes way more into the interesting bits.

<comment><USER11> My whole point was it is way easier than one thinks and there are good free resources available. Once you do the basic of git filesystem , object storage and sha basics implementing the rest of the API is trivial in comparison.

<comment><USER10> It's true that you can find most content somewhere freely available in various disparate corners of the web and everything is trivial if you have the info... but that's a strange reason to automatically reject a book you haven't read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does this address the cryptic-ness of git commands? E.g. are the various commands we all know and love like `git reset HEAD`, `git co --track origin/branch` etc. made clearer?

Even after years of using git, this is for me a major pain point.

<comment><USER14> A stated goal is

> a simple command-line interface is provided for the most common git > operations, optimized for user experience. A simple-git if you so will.

But an explicit non-goal is

> replicate git command functionality perfectly git is git, and there is no > reason to not use it. Our path is the one of simplicity to make getting > started with git easy. a simple command-line interface is provided for the > most common git operations, optimized for user experience. A simple-git if > you so will.

So it depends. They may refine some parts of the UX, others may be identical, and other still will be left unimplemented because git still exists.

<comment><USER15> Git achieves that stated goal, to a degree, via git alias. You can define your own simple versions of the commands or shortcuts.

What you've done is awesome!

What I would love to see is a pure-Rust reproduction of the git commands we know, some simple-git flavor commands, a Git API we can call from Rust, and the ability to add new Rust written git commands. I would love to put my money where my mouth is and volunteer to help, but my job right now is consuming all of my time not spent on family.

<comment><USER13> Git alias is bittersweet to me, much the same as various GUIs on top of VCS, like magit in Emacs etc. They give you a simplified interface to a subset of the functionality. But when you need to escape out of that, suddenly you need to use the full complex solution, and without the constant training of using the 'real deal'. I see git aliases in the same category. Gitoxide sounds a lot more complete.

Furthermore, git aliases work on your machine. Then you ssh to a server and suddenly `git please-do-my-command-without-many-weird-options` don't work. Yes you can sync them, but not super-easily. Whereas a complete tool you can just distribute onto the machines you work on. Not entirely different, but not the same either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fascinating, this doesn't use `libgit2` anywhere. I didn't expect that. Very cool.

<comment><USER17> What did you expect instead from "pure rust"?

<comment><USER18> Not sure what is meant by pure, probably another way of marketing to Rust aficionados. It uses crates which still rely on unsafe 'C' code to interact with operating system for interacting with files and file related OS calls.

It will be nice instead of proclaiming Rust as "C" replacement it should have positioned as "A language complementing C/C++ to write safe code".

Recently Servo project is abandoned by Mozilla for which Rust is a primary language.

Now need to see, if Rust can fulfils it's primary objective to write Firefox in Rust, it looks more remote now. So it will take much longer for Rust to become as ubiquitous and important as Go language for systems programming. Probably Microsoft and others might pick to write some core new systems in Rust, instead of just rewriting same working C/C++ code in Rust for marketing purposes.

<comment><USER19> > Not sure what is meant by pure, probably another way of marketing to Rust > aficionados.

"Pure" is not some Rust marketing ploy :-)

It's a pretty established term meaning "written only with". I've seen pure Python, pure PHP, pure JavaScript, etc libraries and apps.

It generally means you don't need another compiler to build or you don't need to know another language to contribute or fix things for yourself.

<comment><USER18> Rust market itself as replacement for C/C++ and proclaims as if all code written in C/C++ is garbage and only Rust can solve it, when majority of it's own useful crates heavily rely on unsafe "C/C++" code.

So "Pure Rust" is also marketing when you look at the crates used by this software are not Pure Rust, but rely on unsafe code of C underneath.

Python, PHP do not claim as C/C++ replacement, indeed Python is synonymous with CPython written in C.

In Rust community so far what I noticed is that they try to down-vote anything which shows them that Go language or Swift are more important systems programming language and Rust needs another 10 years to reach to write enough useful software like Go or Swift.

Also in Python look at the example of pure python HTTP server Cheroot [1] and check how many PyPI packages it relies on. Also it can run in CPython, PyPy or Jython or any implementation of Python. Rust does not have anything like this yet so using Pure is misleading given it only has one compiler dependent on LLVM (written in C++) to generate target binary.

[1] [https://github.com/cherrypy/cheroot](https://github.com/cherrypy/cheroot)

<comment><USER19> Are you a C programmer threatened by the emergence of a C competitor? I have nothing to gain by "promoting" Rust as I'm not a Rust dev. You have commented a lot in these threads to complain about Rust.

If I'm right remember that both your self worth and your employability are ultimately not tied to C. Programmers switching programming languages are not life long miners that have to turn overnight into lawyers. You start building something with Rust and you should be operational quite quickly, most of your skills transfer over.

<comment><USER18> > You start building something with Rust and you should be operational quite > quickly

Rust is anything but easy and simple like Go language.

Please try building something like Kubernetes in Rust instead of Go and you will realize "Rust" is a a complicated language (worse than complex). Rust has a steep learning curve and the standard library is quite limited. So you will need to search and choose from different crates to do eve basic work. Eventually one can be productive in it after 2-3 years of development. Compared to it Swift, Go are much easier to pick up as systems programming language and C++ 20 is advanced enough to write safety critical code. There is a reason why large body of systems programming and software for database,network servers is written in Go language not Rust.

<comment><USER20> OT: "Steep learning curve". Can someone give me an intuition that explains the meaning? My understanding is that it means "requires a lot of effort to learn to some degree", but when I see the words "learning curve", I imagine a graph with time on the x-axis and knowlege on the y-axis, and when that curve is steep, that means you acquire a lot of knowledge in a short time. Which is kind of the opposite...

Can someone give me an intuition that doesn't clash with the intended meaning like that?

<comment><USER21> Have the y-axis represent effort required to advance, and x-axis level of mastery achieved.

F.ex "effort" could be quantified as topics in a book to cover before being ready for the next chapter, and "mastery" as simply number of chapters read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How much use of _unsafe_ is there?

'Pure Rust' counts for little if the code overuses Rust's unsafe features.

 _edit_ This was a sincere question. I'm glad the answer turned out to be that there's very little of it.

<comment><USER23> rg "unsafe " | wc -l tells me there are 19 occurences, for about 13.7k lines of Rust in total. So it's not a lot.

<comment><USER22> Good to hear. It's important to ask though.

There was an HN discussion a few months back on a Rust program that overused the unsafe features, to the point it may as well have been written in C. Sure enough, it turned out to be full of nasty bugs.

<comment><USER24> > to the point it may as well have been written in C

Mildly disagree. Even if half the code base is unsafe, that's better than a code base where everything is unsafe. Now I only have to audit half the code base for crazy shit, which is about half the effort. A stronger type system means that even in unsafe land, we can still encode some invariants better.

I disagree with this notion that "if you're going to have bugs anyway, what's the point of Rust". Our goal isn't to eliminate every bug in the world, it's to have fewer bugs today than we did yesterday. Rust, even Rust with several unsafes thrown in, helps us achieve that goal.

<comment><USER23> In principle I agree, but note that such projects are not created in a vacuum. Someone who goes out of their way to put that much unsafe into the codebase is more likely to commit mistakes that lead to ub than someone who just writes C stuff.

<comment><USER24> > Someone who goes out of their way to put that much unsafe into the codebase > is more likely to commit mistakes that lead to ub than someone who just > writes C stuff.

[citation needed]. And it would be hard to find a citation because most Rust codebases don't have much unsafe. The repo you're thinking of was an anomaly and has since improved a lot.

<comment><USER25> > I disagree with this notion that "if you're going to have bugs anyway, > what's the point of Rust" [...] [citation needed]

Well, this can be related to an actual real-world concept, that is "programming in a certain language with the syntax/runtime of another".

In my experience, all the times I've seen this happening, the project was just terribly written.

I program in Rust, and if I happened to put an excessive¹ amount of unsafe code in Rust, it means that simply, I'm not programming in Rust. In my opinion, in real world this phenomenon happens for beginners, lazy programmers, or bad programmers, _especially_ for Rust, because it has a steep learning curve, and it requires an effort, when designing a project, that other languages don't require.

So there is a point, although theoretical, that a good programmer in an unsafe language, can produce a more stable project than a bad programmer in a safe language.

With that in mind, I still wish as others to see unsafe languages disappear :-)

¹="excessive" is of course subjective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This was bound to happen at some point

<comment><USER27> Is there a Rust version of Atwood's Law?

\---

FTI [0]:

> In 2007, Jeff Atwood made the quote that was popularly referred to as > Atwood's Law:[5] >> "Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will > eventually be written in JavaScript."

[0]: [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Jeff_Atwood](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Jeff_Atwood)

<comment><USER28> Atwood's Law 2.0 should probably be about WASM

<comment><USER24> And there is a language that's pretty good at compiling to wasm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As I have understood it, the major coding flaws in Git involve failure to handle OS and file system errors responsibly. (The SQLite people are very persuasive on the topic.) Rust does not seem to bring anything new to this particular table.

Any improvement in this area would need to inhere in library-level facilities constructed for the purpose. What are they?

<comment><USER30> Rusts good support for option and result types might help here.

<comment><USER31> Yes! Rust's error handling story is excellent.

You can still swallow errors if you want to but you have to manually write unwrap() so it's much more visible.

<comment><USER32> Not to be overly pedantic but calling .unwrap() is about as far from swallowing an error as you can get. That's gonna panic right away if it's an error case.

<comment><USER31> Sorry, yes, you're quite right.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NASA's plan to save Earth from a supervolcano - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170817-nasas-ambitious-plan-to-save-earth-from-a-supervolcano <comment><USER2> Seems like it might be prudent to first try extracting 35% of the heat from a volcano smaller than the Yellowstone Caldera. We might learn some things, and if we get it wrong the consequences don't result in widespread starvation.

That said, it's obvious that this plan is just the start of serious investigation into how we can engineer mitigations to an eruption at Yellowstone. I would be interested in seeing a model of the impact that surface-level cooling would have on the pressures deeper in the system. If we prevent an eruption now, are we making it worse in the future?

Other solutions I can envision might be to deliberately trigger smaller eruptions over longer timescales at the boundaries of the caldera. We could also look at large-scale mitigations for volcanic particulates in the atmosphere, including solutions that may require several hundred or thousand years of advanced preparation for success. If we could control the impact of a significant yellowstone eruption to a single hemisphere, or limit the duration to a single summer, most ecosystems would be able to recover quickly.

<comment><USER3> I don't think we dare trigger any eruptions at Yellowstone, ever ever ever. My understanding is that there's a positive feedback loop that kicks in; there's just no way to know the whole thing won't go up.

But the plan of drilling into the bottom of the magma chamber from the sides sounds like it might be safe enough. The pressure is much higher there, which ironically is safer because it keeps dissolved gases from coming out of solution, which is what starts the eruption process. That, at least, is my non-expert understanding.

<comment><USER4> So releasing the pressure will cause the dissolved gasses to come out of solution, triggering the actual eruption? Sounds dangerous.

<comment><USER5> There should be a way to pull energy out of it without risking releasing the current pressure. The hot solid rocks above are pretty good at transferring heat, and you only need to drill part of the way into them. A very small hole can move a lot of energy.

<comment><USER4> Point is that lowering the temperature would cause an eruption if what GP says is true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Afghanistan campaign costs about 3 billion a month, so drilling a volcano for a similar amount shouldn't break the bank. This will contribute far more to our security!

<comment><USER7> Wolf Blitzer at CNN tells us that it's actually a moral problem to stop funding war because defense contractors will lose jobs.

Source: [https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is- worried-...](https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried- defense-contractors-will-lose-jobs-if-u-s-stops-arming-saudi-arabia/)

<comment> castle-bravo I find it amazing that CNN has been able to remain dominant in television news broadcasting. They're a vicious clique of bloodthirsty warmongering propagandists. You'd think people would have grown disgusted at some point in the last 30 years and tuned out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was just in Yellowstone so much is still unknown about it and the more I read about it and saw the more afraid I became of it. At one point we saw a crater the size of a city block it was a geyser then in the 80s exploded and killed a few people. I got to thinking "WTF are we doing here this thing is going to blow at any time!?"

<comment><USER9> I live near Yellowstone (as in going there, seeing the sights and going home is a day trip with time to spare) and always tell people that we're the lucky ones. If the Yellowstone volcano ever goes in our lifetime we'll die instantly. If it goes off, most of the populated world is going to die anyways, might as well be the first.

<comment><USER10> Serious question: is your house insured against volcano?

<comment><USER9> No, I'm pretty sure there would be no one to make a claim even if they were.

<comment><USER10> Eruptions are preceded by earthquakes, venting and other events. I think there is a good chance people would evacuate from a smaller eruption (verses a life on earth extinction event)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone else surprised by the excess heat number? 6GW?

The reactors at Chernobyl were 3.2GW thermal designs and they had four of them. I guess I would have thought a super volcano that can cause human mass extinction would be... more powerful?

<comment><USER12> The other part to remember though is that it takes roughly 600,000 years to build up enough pressure to erupt.

<comment><USER13> earth holds onto shit. imagine not letting go of something for 600,000 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this post does a pretty good job of addressing why the thought experiment will remain in the realm of science fiction.

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/rockyplanet/2017/08/31/225...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/rockyplanet/2017/08/31/2250904/)

<comment><USER15> I disagree. I'll take this sentence:

> When all is said and done, a massive eruption at Yellowstone, or any other > caldera for that matter, isn't a question we should answer by trying to stop > it. Instead, we need to build resilience into our society to survive after > such an event.

Why? This doesn't make much sense to me. Seems much better to prevent a giant catastrophe from happening in the first place than trying to pick up the pieces when it's done (an ounce of prevention and all that).

Furthermore, his arguments get totally hand-wavy when it comes to whether a power plant could remove heat fast enough to prevent an eruption. At the end of the day, all you need is a higher wattage out than in, and I see no reason that would be impossible.

<comment><USER16> Infinitely more things than yellowstone can go wrong

<comment><USER17> I don't know what your definition of infinite is but that doesn't sound right at all, and further your argument applies equally to all existential risks, so it doesn't really tell you that you shouldn't work on this particular one.

<comment><USER16> "Instead, we need to build resilience into our society" is the key here, many many things can happen.

<comment><USER18> Building resilience _instead of_ preventing a catastrophe sounds like a false dichotomy.

A mark of a resilient society could be the ability and will to (1) predict the development of events and sense probable future catastrophes long in advance, and to (2) invest into preventive measures that would show effectiveness many lifetimes later.

Concrete actions might range from cooling down volcanoes like per TFA, to colonizing other worlds, to systematic construction and maintenance of contingency infrastructure, to deliberate collective mindset shifts.

Perhaps what we both can agree on is that it's this long-term consciousness that we (as humanity) may be lacking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How about we actually do something like increase the reserve food supply from more than 72 days? Yellowstone is not the only potential source of disruption to the food supply and right now if anything happens in the northern summer we are totally screwed.

<comment><USER20> If we assume that a supervolcano blocks out the sun enough to prevent crops from growing for two years and that increasing the 72 day buffer is impractical, then how could we ride it out without mass starvation?

I'd guess there'd be a lot of sudden interest in energy-efficient LED grow lights and there'd be an over-supply of beef in the short term because there's no food for the cattle, so we might as well eat them.

Long term, it's all about being able to have enough indoor hydroponic/aeroponic space to grow enough food for ~7.5 billion people, which sounds really difficult and impractical.

I find it interesting that one possible benefit of Elon Musk's Mars plan is that the same space/energy/resource efficient food production technology that will be needed on Mars is the same technology we would need on Earth in order to ride out certain catastrophes. By creating an interplanetary "insurance policy" to ensure human survival, we may improve our ability to survive on Earth.

<comment><USER19> The alternative is we build up a stockpile of food in a similar way to the US strategic oil stockpile. If oil is worth having in storage in case something bad happens it would seem obvious that food should be in the same category.

<comment><USER21> Food spoils so a stockpile like that isn't quite feasible. Sure we'll be able to get some foods that store well and can last for years but that's a small subset of food and even that food not all of it lasts for more than two years.

It's just not realistic. Sure we can significantly enlarge our buffer but two or more years? I can't see that happening in any practical sense.

<comment><USER19> Most grains can be stored for years under the right conditions. Sure the quality will decline over that time, but given we are feeding a large amount of grain to livestock this decline is manageable.

Even having a single years buffer would be very worthwhile. As I mentioned in the OP if we have a catastrophic event in the northern summer the poor are in serious trouble.

<comment><USER22> The problem is the food you are storing is constantly going bad. So you need to recreate the entire massive food stockpile every year or so, in order to have it ready when the time comes. We'd have to find a way to efficiently cycle food through the stockpile and back to consumers before it became useless. But I doubt consumers are going to be lining up to buy old food. The food would be expensive to buy fresh, then wouldn't sell for much when it is old. It would be a crazy expensive program, and it would increase the price of fresh food for everyone.

<comment><USER19> Not if the stored grain was fed to livestock. We already do this in practice as we keep the high quality grain for direct human consumption, while the lower quality grain is fed to livestock.

Once the stockpile was established and the process of cycling it set up, then the cost should be relatively minor.

More importantly what is the alternative? Let everyone starve?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sounds like we just need to convince some high tech billionaire that they need a supervillain lair powered by geothermal energy. Maybe power a data center or something. Put that excess heat to good use :-)

<comment> 90s-socal-kid Too bad Kim Dotocm isn't wealthy enough (anymore?) to do this. I'm picturing him as the supervillain who builds out an encrypted data storage facility, like out of Cryptonomicon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The advantages may be obvious but it all comes down to unit economics. How do costs per MW compare to something like coal, hydro, wind, or solar? And let's not forget the risk assessment that needs to be done in case the supervolcano does in fact explode, or even hiccup. Will it destroy or incapacitate the energy generating facilities?

<comment><USER25> Isn't the Yellowstone eruption essentially the same as the dinosaur ending meteorite event? Wouldn't most humans die except for those that could live off of stored foods/what could be raised off of stored food for a couple of years until the sun is visible again ala The Road (besides immediately killing a large percentage of Americans)?

<comment><USER26> I don't think it's on that magnitude. Humanity lived through an even larger eruption (Toba). I don't think anything but small animals living underground could have survived that asteroid.

<comment><USER27> Didn't toba reduce humanity to something like 2000 people?

<comment><USER25> It's a pretty good hypothesis with some backing in the genetic record and the timing of the event, the wikipedia says somewhere between 2000-20000 breeding individuals. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory) Not sure where humanity was on the evolution timeline for the last Yellowstone eruption, but our ancestors somehow got through that, too.

<comment><USER26> Wasn't it discredited with the finding of human remains above and below the ash layer in India?

<comment><USER25> The wikipedia article mentions that there are similar stone tools above and below the ash layer in India so that it may be that the Toba eruption did not kill everyone in India even though it was local to India.

So it could be could be coincidence on the timing of the Toba eruption and the genetic narrowing down of the human race at almost the same time. But something happened 70,000 years ago, if not Toba, what was it? Maybe the onset of the ice age + Toba + other things occurring close together in time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What about radiating the heat into space?

<comment><USER29> Why do that when it could be usefully used on the ground to generate electricity?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Did anyone else hear joint venture between the boring company and tesla? Volcano powered cars!

</comment><comment><USER31> So they need to re-drill constantly? (after each m3.)

<comment><USER32> I have no idea what you mean by "m3", and I did some google searches ("m3 volcano" "m3 drilling") and it's still not clear.

If "m3" is jargon related to volcanos, geology, drilling, or geothermic power generation, I submit to you that most HN readers will be unfamiliar with the term.

Or maybe it's just me.

<comment><USER33> Probably refers to earthquakes ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is there any research not on pre-emptive cooling, but about how to fast clean the atmosphere, to prevent a lasting nuclear winter, once the disaster happend?

</comment><comment><USER34> If global warming decreases heat transportation to the surface, wouldnt the atmosphere and the volcanos form a self-regulating plant?

</comment><comment><USER35> BBC.com as of late has been turning into Clickbait.com

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, any project to drain the supervolcano's energy will meet with immense resistance from various groups of humans with limited intelligence who don't realize its power and the extinction-level destruction its explosion will cause. The article lists at least two ways of safely extracting the supervolcano's power without risking the triggering of an explosion, but this won't be enough to convince the idiotic naysayers. By harnessing its energy, we can have clean energy for millennia.

<comment><USER36> So it's limited intelligence to read an article that states "But drilling into a supervolcano does not come without certain risks. Namely triggering the eruption you're intending to prevent."? They state that it could cause an eruption, yes they have an idea for how to minimize the risk but that doesn't mean no risk. As much as we may not like it, some people don't like taking risks at all. They'd rather do nothing and take their chances than take a risk.

<comment><USER12> Of course, there is a risk to doing nothing as well. (Literally, 'take their chances'...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This just looks like an attempt to get geothermal energy from Yellowstone. The 6GW power getting out of the ground now is really nothing compared to the energy that's down there. Thermal conduction and fluid transport are what allows the energy to the surface. Adding geo-thermal power generation would increase energy dissipated but would do little to actually change the geologic situation.

I suspect if you asked power companies if they'd go for it they would jump at the opportunity, but TFA jumps the gun and suggests that the government may need to offer incentives to get started.

In short: Let's use peoples fear of global calamity to get them to allow drilling and building in a national park and get free money from the government too.

<comment><USER38> Indeed, as it seems NASA's best capability is to 'get free money from the government' (not volcano nor space exploration as many would expect).

<comment> 90s-socal-kid Any agency primarily funded by government that survives past 10-15 years will have that as their primary competency.

It's more fair to judge NASA's space capabilities against all the other groups that take gov't money. They are much better at space than, say, the Department of Labor.

Just because there are recent, private entrants, who built much of their technology on the foundation work done by NASA, does not mean NASA should be mocked in this manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The other problem not mentioned: Yellowstone is the middle of fricken nowhere.

Electricity is hard to send long distances and central planning projects have shown to be their own disasters time-and-time again through history. "This time around though" we have more established population centers so maybe we can pull it off? Not sure! If the power could be produced cheap enough, it might pay off to maintain the massive power grid to send electricity to population centers...

What would truly be revolutionary is phase change electricity storage mechanism! Imagine being able to "ship" electricity on conventional roads, or even in existing pipelines, much the way we do with hydrocarbons.

Batteries charge roughly at the same rate they discharge, making electric cars a PITA. A conventional automobile can be "charged up" with enough potential energy in 8 mins in what takes the fastest chargers 75mins.

<comment><USER40> _" Imagine being able to "ship" electricity on conventional roads, or even in existing pipelines, much the way we do with hydrocarbons."_

That's why people get excited about Hydrogen. Surplus energy can be used to produce H2 via electrolysis. The process is pretty inefficient, but that perhaps doesn't matter if the energy source is abundant enough.

However, the infrastructure required for H2 distribution would be expensive. You can't use existing gas pipelines. It's probably more practical and affordable to just build long-distance HVDC connectors to export 6GW of energy.

<comment><USER41> H2 can be converted to DME (dimethylether) and then transported like LPG. DME is a much cleaner diesel replacement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The idea of any group of humans "saving the Earth" is neighbouring on hubris. It's fine for the plot line of a Hollywood movie, but pragmatically we can't even engage in civil discourse anymore. Tampering with systems like plate tectonic without the ability to even predict the effects of oil shale fracking means we still have a lot to learn.

If the concern of the Earth being wiped out is legitimate, then focus instead on colonizing Space. The end result is the same: preserving human civilization.

<comment><USER43> Achieving the technology required to colonize space would also allow us to maintain our existence on Earth.

<comment><USER42> Exactly my point.</comment></comment></comment>


Want More STEM Teachers? Increase High-Skilled Immigration - <AUTHOR> http://sarahdillard.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/want-more-stem-teachers-increase-high-skilled-immigration/

<comment><USER2> Fuck that. Want More STEM Teachers? Pay them a wage commensurate with their ability and schooling. A STEM teacher is worth 4x what a 'Physical Education' teacher is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Want more Stem Teachers? Raise wages. Americans CAN! Americans DO!

</comment><comment><USER4> Another example of immigrants taking American jobs because the job doesn't pay enough (anymore).</comment>


Crew Spending Weekend in Station's Russian Segment – Space Station - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2020/08/20/crew-spending-weekend-in-stations-russian-segment/ <comment> java-man What is the standard procedure to identify the leak location? From the outside? From the inside? Can one inspect the outer panels from the inside?</comment>


It's time for scooter superhighways - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/08/an-immodest-proposal-its-time-for-scooter-superhighways/ <comment><USER2> There are 2 million cars in los angeles and a couple thousand scooters. In a year maybe we can get that down to 1 million cars and 1 million scooters?</comment>


JP Morgan Intermediate Level SWE vs. Amazon Entry Level SWE - <AUTHOR> Will be graduating in May and got offers from these two companies. Any thoughts on where to go? <comment><USER2> Look at cost of living. I work in higher education on a small team, we typically train 3-6 interns per year in software engineering and programming with an emphasis on cloud and security. We see a lot of fresh grads enticed to large companies for 6 figure jobs, but they have troubles realizing the cost of living difference from even a heavy college town.

Total up your expected monthly bills (student loans, car payments, credit card debt) and compare the cost of housing where they want you to work. Check the commute times from 5-20 miles away -- is it a second job (10+ hours/week) to commute to work? Is this an acceptable QOL?

I moved out of the city to work at a university, I took a 20% pay cut, but gained an average 10 hours/week of free time and could afford a home 2400 sq ft home instead of sharing an 1200 sq foot apartment.

So where do you want to live? What commute time will you accept?

I'd figure those out before even applying places. After that, look at how the businesses treat their employees... And how their policies might impact QOL. Most businesses in northern Virginia only give 1.5-2 weeks paid vacation to entry level employees last I heard.

</comment><comment><USER3> Both will look great on a resume but where do you want to end up?

Amazon pushes you closer to big tech companies as you are staring out inside FAANG.

JP Morgan pushes you to the fintech world.

My 16+ years experience tells me that either will be a great starting company. I'd personally find the work at JP Morgan more interesting if you like learning through osmosis.

Jeff Bezos started out in banking.

Finance is the language that unites all commerce.

That said, Amazon is doing big things and is going to be a big player in the fight against this virus. There are worse places to be that will need help from smart people (not that anyone will listen to a fresh grad).

</comment><comment><USER4> How much money do you want, and what are your morals like?

What type of living situation would you prefer?</comment>


Green tea benefits memory - <AUTHOR> http://www.parentherald.com/articles/4435/20140409/green-tea-can-improve-your-memory.htm <comment><USER3> Sigh, blogspam from a non-scientific source, about a study with a tiny sample size. Everything is wrong with this one:

The study made them eat 27.5 grams of green tea extract (dissolved in a liquid), then measured brain connectivity by MRI. This MRI-measured brain connectivity was slightly higher, whatever that might mean in practice-- actual memory performance was not measured, it seems.

As pretty much always for such articles: the title is incorrect, the findings are probably wrong, and the article was written by someone without scientific understanding and/or integrity.

<comment><USER4> indeed, the biggest story is in fact in the discussion of this article - <USER2> the hell did you manage to get a username like 'computer' in a place like this?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A study sponsored by a company that sells green tea drinks with a sample size of 12. Seems legit!

<comment><USER4> certainly, n=12 is not science, it's only a mild improvement on wild conjecture.

however, i can't seem to find anything that says the study was funded by a company that sells green tea drinks (or anything that would call the study's impartiality into question)

<comment><USER6> The paper is at [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00213-014-3526-1...](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00213-014-3526-1/fulltext.html) . The acknowledgements say:

> This study was supported by grants from the Rivella. All authors have agreed > to its submission in this form and we do not have any conflict of interests > that might be interpreted as influencing its content. The sponsor of the > study had no role in study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of > data, writing of this report, and in the decision to submit the paper for > publication.

Rivella is a milk whey-based soft drink from Switzerland. Green Rivella is flavored with green tea extract. And indeed, in the section on "Composition of test drinks":

> Rivella is a commercially available carbonated soft drink on the basis of > milk whey. In 1999, a new flavor with a 0.05 % addition of standardized > green tea extract was introduced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like green ice tea, but normal green tea I can't get used to it, even when mixed with lemon or something - still don't like the taste much.</comment>


SCHED the Mighty SXSW Scheduler (or The App I Built In 5 Days) - <AUTHOR> http://sched.org

<comment><USER2> I know a few people from Phoenix who will be presenting at SXSW. I searched on some names, and got no hits.

Is this handling just a sub-set of all of SXSW? Are names not searchable?

Oh, and is there source code one can glom? :)

It looks really sweet.

<comment><USER3> I just added panelist info to the db. The search currently only searches the event name and venues. I'll see if I can make it search panelists and the detailed description without putting too much pressure on the tiny server.

<comment><USER3> You can now search for specific panelists.

<comment><USER2> Great, thank you very much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is brilliant. This will be really handy for me, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER5> What's SXSW? When I read "scheduler" I started trying to parse it as a locking scheme. "Shared eXclusive Shared Write? WTF does that mean?"

</comment><comment><USER6> the user/pass nag thing is kind of annoying but this is a very cool implementation of a quick and simple scheduling app.

in fact, use the berkeley schedule for the data backend and i would switch to using this over the other hacked together schedulers available.

ps. i <3 hypem

<comment><USER3> I just disabled the alert that said "Please enter a username and password above first" when you clicked on an event without logging in. Now it just shows the event details.

The signup process is extremely simple. Type in a username, enter a password and it creates an account. I'm the first one to complain about needless signups but to make your own schedule and have it printable in a decent format, signing up is pretty much the best solution.

I just setup iCal export for your selected sched.org events. My username is 'chirag' so my schedule will be <http://sched.org/sxsw2008/chirag> and iCal URL will be <http://sched.org/sxsw2008/chirag.ical>

If you use Google Calendar, you can import this directly.

This is a very specific tool with a narrow market/target-audience and not meant to replace anything general like Google Calendar or Eventful.

<comment><USER6> As for usage, what I meant was at Berkeley a student made a homebrew app to help organize class schedules.

This is the database: <http://schedule.berkeley.edu/>

This is the app: <http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~amanb/makeSched/>

Your app is the perfect interface if it can hook into the Berkeley schedule database.</comment></comment></comment>


Is making your product free and open source crazy talk? - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/business/14/7/interview-Patrick-McFadin-Datastax

<comment><USER2> All our our products are Open Source and the code is freely available and Apache licensed. But despite that, in a sense, our "products" are NOT free. What I mean is, when you buy a subscription, what you're buying isn't the bits, or the code... you're buying our _assurance_ that that particular combination of bits works in a certain way, and that you can call somebody and get help if they don't work, and the assurance that if the shit hits the fan at 2am there's support there, assurance that patches will be made available on a defined time-frame, assurance that there will be somebody available to provide training, professional services, etc.

And companies care about this sort of thing. And, by and large, they're happy to pay for it. Which is why Red Hat can do a billion dollars in revenue, despite the availability of CentOS and Scientific Linux.

So, no, I don't think make your products free and open source is "crazy talk" especially in a B2B / enterprise software scenario.</comment>


Virological assessment of hospitalized cases of coronavirus disease 2019 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20030502v1.full.pdf <comment><USER2> Insight: Only people who are at 10 days from symptom onset AND have sputum RNA less than 100,000/mL can be sent into the wild. This shows many people still have 5 LOG10 RNA copies through about 2 weeks and some with 'more severe mild' disease shed closer to 3 weeks. Some hospital systems are NOT testing mild suspected cases and telling people to quarantine for 7-10 day. This paper shows the policy is totally inadequate and people are being released to the wild much too early.</comment>


Snapchat Has A Patent That Could Help It Become The Defacto Camera App - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/21/snapchat-has-a-patent-that-could-help-it-become-the-defacto-camera-app/

<comment><USER2> There's something novel about this? I recall an application back in the Eclair days that did this. Hell, pretty sure there are physical cameras that had a "burst mode" type deal that would either take 10frames in burst if you tap the shutter button or 5 seconds of video if you held the button</comment>


Sexual Harassment at Uber Reminds Us That HR Is Not Your Friend - <AUTHOR> http://www.financialsamurai.com/sexual-harassment-at-uber-reminds-us-hr-is-not-your-friend/ <comment><USER2> "build a relationship with your HR manager" \-- But that is how we got in this situation!

Joking aside, I used to think HR was a construct of SJW that hated men. Now I've done a 180 to believe it's a way for corporations to ignore bad behavior by having a paper trail of how they "tried" to deal with it.

I'm never certain that the stories I read are true, but have no doubt that this type of stuff happens all the time.</comment>


Hadoop, Mongo and Node.js: from Big Data to your Browser - <AUTHOR> http://datasyndrome.com/post/29643744053/hortonworks-pig-as-hadoop-connector-part-one-pig

<comment><USER2> Blog spam. Original that it links to: [http://hortonworks.com/blog/pig-as- connector-part-one-pig-mo...](http://hortonworks.com/blog/pig-as-connector- part-one-pig-mongodb-and-node-js/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Its not spam. I am the author and am linking to it from my personal blog.

<comment><USER2> Your blog, though, does not add anything. Hence, I call it "blog spam" even though you are the author of both (which I think is kinda strange). We prefer to have direct links to articles, not links to blogs which link to articles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Title is misleading. Seems it's just a very complicated way to load a dataset into mongodb.</comment>


Although binary search is straightforward, the details can be tricky - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_search_algorithm#Implementation_issues

<comment><AUTHOR> Today I found myself (once more) commenting to someone how tricky implementing something as basic as binary search can be. Not the first time, either, that I receive an incredulous "you think so?" from my interlocutor. So I began to think why was it that I thought this. I found the answer in this article, with a quote from the very Knuth himself.

I'm pretty sure I read both the Knuth, Bentley and Bloch notes about this at some point, and basically made the quote part of my beliefs system :-).

The article from J. Bloch also makes for an interesting, short read [1]. In a nutshell the piece of the algorithm that implements the pivot index is often implemented like this:

int mid = (low + high) / 2;

... which is incorrect because (low + high) introduce the risk of overflow for big enough indexes overflowing the int capacity. Possible solution:

int mid = low + ((high - low) / 2);

1: [http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/06/extra-extra- read-...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all- about-it-nearly.html)</comment>